Known Autumn Too Long
by simplyprologue
Summary: A fortnight after Sandor Clegane rescues Sansa Stark from the Vale, the tensions that have arisen due to the interceding years between their last meeting come to a head. Sansan, one-shot.


**A/N: **Written awhile ago for the sansaxsandor community's comment fic meme, based off the prompt "kiss in the rain." Not beta'd, one-off.

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_A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long. _-ee cummings

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It has been a long trip from the Vale, one that has left them stranded in the deep forests of the Riverlands, hiding out from Freys and Littlefinger's men, two enemies hoping to tow them in and Sansa knows that either way if they are found Sandor is dead.

_Not a girl_, she thinks, and wants to shout angrily. She is woman of seven and ten, wedded and bedded four times over and a widow again, when Sandor thrust his dagger into Petyr Baelish's neck, not a fortnight ago. But she will always be a girl to him. And she wants to prove to him that she is a woman grown, with breasts and hips and a waist, who bleeds and is the rightful Lady Stark of Winterfell and he mustn't treat her the way he does, calling her _child _and _girl_ as if it is of no consequence.

_I am leaving_, she wants to yell. _I am leaving and I am going to Winterfell, I am going home and neither you nor any other man who seeks to protect me can stop me._

Instead, he grabs her arm, jerking her back towards him where he stands—where they both stand, in cold, piercing rain, both having soaked through in a matter of seconds.

"Girl—"

She slaps him.

She isn't sure where the impulse comes from, and must fight the instinct to cover her face and cower when she pulls her hand back from his face; she forces herself to look him in the eyes, because she is a woman and only children shrink away.

Sandor freezes, hand tight around her bicep.

"I—I was a child once," she says, nearly yelling over the rain. "I was a child in Winterfell and a child in King's Landing and a child wed and I child the last time you saw me. But it is winter now, _ser_, and I am a child no longer. I am a woman who has seen her father beheaded and husbands murdered and children murdered and—and I would compel you to treat me as thus."

Sansa shivers, the wool of her dress sticking uncomfortably to her skin, which is now cold and puckered, and this is nothing like the summer rains that she and her brothers and sisters would play in. But she is warm on the inside, now, something like power beating through her veins.

She holds his eyes, sees them burn. She knows that look, has seen it in other men's eyes. She thinks perhaps he's always looked at her like that—but only for her, not for her claim, not for her name. He burned for her back when she naught but a prisoner, beaten and stripped and humiliated, when _little bird_ tumbled from his lips and he left her with only a kiss and a cloak.

"You will take me home, I do not care if Wintefell stands in ruins—I will have it," she says, trembling as his hand slides down from her bicep and in over her waist. His other hand rises to her face, and Sansa wonders if it is shaking like hers are, but cannot bear to wrench her blue eyes away from his grey ones. His fingers brush a sopping rope of hair from her eyes, haphazardly try and push it behind her ear. "And it belongs to me as much as I belong to it."

"Aye, my lady."

She doesn't like that. Sansa smiles, choking back something like a sob and something like a laugh, eyes watering all the same.

"Little bird," she corrects him. "I was your little bird. I liked it. It made me feel safe."

The rain begins to beat down even harder on them, thunder rumbling through the sky, so loud and pervading that the trees around them sway tremulously. They should go back inside the cave; seek refuge again. Go to their separate corners and strip down to bare skin and huddle near the fire, avoid the other's eyes and stare at each other's naked forms all the same, saying nothing, unmoving. They are both stubborn people.

And Sansa does not want another night of sleeping with his sword between them.

* * *

He doesn't know what she's thinking, or why she doesn't move when he caresses her hair, traces her high, noble cheekbone with this thumb. All Seven Hells and Seven Heavens are Sansa Stark. He'll never be free of her, he knows, not when he died with her face the only thing his fevered eyes could see and her on his mind when he awoke eight days later on the Quiet Isle.

It was not a decision to seek her out when he heard that Littlefucker had used her to climb his way to Lord of the Vale, nor was it a decision when Sansa nodded to him, pale and trembling and wrapped in a bloody sheet, to slit the fucker's throat. Sansa Stark is all he is now, and all he ever will be.

And he cannot deny that she is a woman—it had been so much easier when her being a simple-headed child could keep him from her, when he could hate himself for wanting her. And now she is in front of him, hot-headed and hot-blooded, her dress clinging to her womanly frame, just reminding him of how willingly she went with him, the look in her eyes when she saw him at the Gates of the Moon, the press of her body against him as he raced Stranger into the Riverlands.

"I'll take you home, little bird," he murmurs. She cannot hear him over the rain, but something like fire flashes through her eyes.

He would take her anywhere, follow her anywhere.

More visceral than the feel of her hand stinging across his face—she is stronger than he would give her credit for—she cups the burned side of his face, hand moving to comb through his wet black hair, nails scraping against his scalp as she brings his mouth to hers.

He does not know how to react, stays frozen until she brings both of her hands to his head, locking him against her. She has more experience in this than him, and he can feel her moan rather than hear it when she slants their mouths together, runs her tongue along his bottom lip, starved for collaboration.

Something very small and very bright inside of Sandor breaks—he locks his arms around her waist, lifting her against him, and she laughs against his mouth and he will do everything he can for the rest of his life to be able to pluck this sweet madness from her for the rest of his life.

He knows that the universe is randomly kind, and strange, and doubtlessly insane; Sansa wraps her arms around his neck, and allows him to kiss her in the pouring rain. And soon, he thinks, he'll bring her inside and carefully remove their clothes and have her by the fire if she'll allow it, and he'll take her home to Winterfell even if he must rebuild it stone by stone himself—

The rain batters down on both of them, but they are not diminished.

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**Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated. :)**


End file.
